Sunday, January 20, 2013

A History Teacher Speaks Out on the CCSS

This week, President Obama
will be sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of
America. As a history teacher, I was elated to learn he would be placing
his hand on two Bibles, one belonging to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
other belonging to President Abraham Lincoln, when he takes the oath of office
to lead our great nation. Dr. King and President Lincoln helped
define civil rights for America...historical heroes who transformed the idea of
justice and equality.

As jubilant as I am that
President Obama is symbolically using the bibles of two of the greatest
Americans in our nation's history, I am saddened that this administration seems
to have forgotten what Dr. King and President Lincoln promoted regarding
education.

In Dr. King's
"Letter from the Birmingham Jail," he stated "the goal of
America is freedom." As a teacher, it is such an honor to teach
America's children about freedom and patriotism. However, over the
past few years, I began to learn about a new education reform initiative called
Common Core Standards. A few years ago, when I first heard of Common
Core, I began doing my own research. My students represent the
future of the United States of America, and what they learn is of utmost
importance to me. I care about their future, and the future of our
country.

My research of Common Core
Standards kept me awake at night, because what I discovered was so shocking.
I discovered that Common Core Standards is about so much more than educational
standards. I wanted so badly to believe these changes would be good for
our children. How can "common" standards be a bad thing?
After all, isn't it nice to have students learning the same exceptional
standards from Alabama to Alaska, from Minnesota to Massachusetts?

As a teacher, I began to
spend nights, weekends, summers, even Christmas Day researching Common Core,
because these reforms were so massive and were happening so quickly, it was
hard to keep up with how American education was being transformed. I
quickly began to realize that the American education system under Common Core
goes against everything great Americans like Dr. King and President Lincoln
ever taught. The very freedoms we celebrate and hold dear are in question
when I think of what Common Core means for the United States.

One of my favorite writings
about education from Dr. King is a paper entitled "The Purpose of
Education." In it, he wrote "To save man from the morass of
propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education
must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false,
the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction." When I sit in
faculty meetings about Common Core, I hear "curriculum specialists"
tell me that Common Core is here to stay and I must "embrace change."
I am forced to drink the kool-aid. These specialists don't tell us to
search for facts about Common Core on our own, they simply tell us what the
people paid to promote Common Core want us to know. Didn't Dr. King want
us to separate facts from fiction? Why are we only given information from
sources paid to say Common Core is a good thing? Isn't that the exact same type
of propaganda Dr. King discussed in his writings about education?
Shouldn't we discuss why thousands of Americans are calling for a repeal of the
standards?

I am told that I must
embrace Common Core and I infer that resisting the changes associated with
Common Core will label me "resistant to change." As a teacher,
I definitely believe our classrooms are changing with the times and I am not
afraid of change. Teachers across America are hearing similar stories
about how they should "feel" about Common Core. This is a
brainwashing bully tactic. It reminds me of my 8th graders' lesson on
bullying, when I teach them to have an opinion of their own. Just because
"everyone's doing it," doesn't make it right. In regards to
Common Core, I am not afraid of change. I am just not going to sell-out
my students' education so that Pearson, the Gates Foundation, David Coleman,
Sir Michael Barber, Marc Tucker and others can experiment on our children.

I agree with Dr. King,
which is why I am so saddened at how propaganda from an elite few is literally
changing the face of America's future with nothing more than a grand experiment
called Common Core Standards. Our children deserve more. Our
teachers deserve more. Our country deserves more. Education reform
is the civil rights issue of our generation, and sadly, parents, teachers, and
students have been left out of the process.

President Lincoln once said
"the philosophy of the classroom today, will be the philosophy of
government tomorrow." With Common Core, new standardized tests have
inundated classrooms with problems of their own. Teachers find themselves
"teaching to the test" more and more. These tests violate our
states' rights. I wonder if parents realized that all states aren't
created equal in Common Core tests? Shouldn't all states, under
"common" standards for everyone have everyone's equal input on how
students are tested?

What about privacy under
Common Core? Why didn't local boards of education tell parents about the
changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act? Do parents
realize their child's data, including biometric data such as fingerprints and
retinal scans, is being placed in a state longitudinal data system and shared
with others?

If our philosophy of the
classroom is to violate states' rights, use children and teachers as guinea
pigs, and hide from parents the fact that their child's data is no longer
private, it can only be inferred that the philosophy of government tomorrow
will do the same. What is America becoming?

As I watched President Obama
place his hand on the bibles of Dr. King and President Lincoln, the history
teacher in me was overjoyed to watch such a patriotic moment in U.S. history.
And yet, I was crushed at the realization that if we do not stop Common Core
and preserve the United States educational system, the philosophy of our
government tomorrow will not be the America we know and love.

2 comments:

Catching on late is better than letting our Precious Free Country be washed away by this enormous disaster!Thank you so much for this research. I want to be part of the public shining light on the truth of Common Core's purpose.May your insight be shared far and wide!Thank you!Susie in Seattle